


Black Lion

by GlowwormiK



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Hunk is useful, Memories return, Memory Loss, Paladins fight together, Reckless Shiro, Zargar fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 05:44:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13827735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GlowwormiK/pseuds/GlowwormiK
Summary: When an attack on Haggar goes wrong and Zarkon manages to recapture the Black Lion, what would be the first thing he does in it?All my thankfullness goes to@hoatafor beta-reading this piece.





	1. Chapter 1

"The left-most one, fire at her!" Allura's voice rang in Lance's ears. The sharpshooter, frozen on his stomach, exhaled and pressed his left eye towards the gunsight of his bayard. The trigger felt lighter than usual when Lance pulled it, but the rebound hit his shoulder as strongly as ever. Lance held his breath: he didn’t shoot a simple laser blast, after all; he was ending the war. He saw one of many Haggars freeze in the mid-air and sink to the ground, covered in a cloud of foam. All the other ones faded like night shadows under the first rays of the sun, and he heard happy yells in his communicator.

It was Lotor who suggested this plan.

“My father and the witch are one and the same,” Lotor said, pacing along the living room of the castle. “Without each other, they are done for. What we need to do is to separate them and kill the witch; after she is gone, the empire won’t last two quintants.”

Despite being returned from exile only a short time ago, Lotor managed to thoroughly research Haggar’s facilities and schedules. The prince claimed that she had secret research bases in the far away quadrant and that she let only Zarkon visit them, apart from few chosen personnel.

“Very soon, it is time for her next inspection to this base." Lotor said, pointing his long clawed finger to the map. "Zarkon will come with her, but he will leave soon, while she usually stays longer. She reports to him twice daily, but between his departure and the first report, they have no communication for a day or so. This is when we will capture her, when she won’t be able to call for help from him.”

“You don’t lose anything,” Lotor kept reassuring them. “If I am lying, you will just wormhole away from there and execute me for treason.”

The Blade of Marmora refused to work with the galran prince, but the paladins spoke for this chance. Finally, they agreed on hiding Voltron within the proximity of the base and waiting to see if Lotor was right. If the battle was to start, Shiro was supposed to try to keep the Black Lion away from Zarkon’s mental grip, even at the cost of minimal engagement. At first, everything seemed to go well. A single cruiser arrived to the base at the time Lotor told them. They waited, until they saw it leave. Then, everyone except for Shiro exited the lions and attacked the base on foot.

Now, everything seemed over. The foam Slav cooked for them worked wonders – it quickly became sticky and was now solidifying, trapping Haggar like a fly in tar, unable to move a finger and use her deadly magical powers. All she could do was watch Lotor in helples rage, as he slowly approached her, pulling his sword out, preparing to deliver the final blow that would send his immortal mother into the nether. Allura and Pidge followed him close nearby, both holding their weapons ready for battle. Lance got up from his hidden spot and hurried towards them, hearing Hunk's breath in the channel, as his friend was running from the other side that he was securing.

“Paladins, the cruiser went into a hyperspace save for a single jet, and it is heading your way! ” Coran’s voice sounded worried over the communication channel.

Lotor and both young women exchanged glances.

“There is no way he could have known…” Lotor murmured uncertainly.

Haggar gasped on the floor, tensing her muscle in a futile attempt to free herself. Hope and mad joy quickly flashed on her face and were replaced with horror, as she started wiggling like crazy, tearing off strands of hair that were stuck to the foam. Lotor summarized her thoughts.  
“It is him, but he is alone. And he is still weakened from his last encounter with Voltron. He stands no chance against us. Today, we finish it once and for all!”

Zarkon barged into the corridor like a cannonball. The bayard was in Shiro’s possession now, so he wielded a mace so familiar to Coran and completely new to the others. Zarkon must have already realized that the base was attacked, so when he appeared, he held it ready for the battle. Lotor was the closest one to the entrance, he lunged forward and attacked his father immediately, without wasting time on words. After the very first tick it became clear that the heavy suit made Zarkon lose a great deal of his agility and seriously limited his movements. Allura and Pidge both couldn't use their bayards freely enough for fear of hitting the prince instead of his father, and Lance and Hunk were still too far, but Lotor alone, with his excellent fighting skill, would have been victorious. An unlucky case decided his fate: Zarkon swung his mace and Lotor dodged, jumping to the side, but his foot touched the foam. He stalled for a split instant, but this was enough. Zarkon’s mace landed right into his forehead, and the prince fell motionless to the floor, blood running down his face.

“Cut my hand out!” Haggar exclaimed feverishly. “The black beast is close!”

Zarkon turned towards her and stretched his arm out to free her. Haggar uttered a warning screech, but it was too late. Zarkon’s metal glove stuck to the foam. He jerked his hand off, leaving the glove stuck, but this time loss allowed Allura and Pidge to attack. Allura's whip bayard cracked and broke one of the vials with quintessence that now kept Zarkon alive and moving, and its tip broke a hole in Zarkon's helmet, releasing a cloud of concentrated quintessence, while Pidge's chain sword tore the mace off his grip and cast it aside. Zarkon grabbed the chain sword by the blade and pulled Pidge towards him, knocking her out with one slam of his fist. However, now that the vial with quintessence on his right shoulder was broken, he stuttered, and his right arm hung down helplessly. Allura raised her whip higher, and Lance dashed into the room, also raising his rifle.

“Sire, go, save yourself!” Haggar croaked, but without success. Zarkon was deaf to her words. Instead of attempting to escape, he made a step back, towards her and turned his left shoulder forward, hiding the motionless right part side of his body further from the attack. His legs gave in, he had to sink on one knee, supporting himself with the good hand. He would seem to be a lifeless pile of metal, covering Haggar from danger, if the single visible purple eye didn’t still burn with the same hatred and resolution like before. Allura swung her weapon to finish him off when everything changed.

The black lion appeared above them, the points of its metal wings still glowing.  
“This is the end to you!” Shiro roared in rage, sending his lion down. “You shall torture no one!”

“Shiro, no…” Allura whispered, but it was too late.

The lion opened its mouth to shoot, but Zarkon already lifted his head, and the powerful creature froze in the mid-air. The time seemed to stop, and the remaining paladins watched in horror how Zarkon slowly stretched out his left arm and opened his clawed palm, not taking his eyes off the motionless lion, as two wills fought desperately over the control over the majestic robot. With a sickening premonition of defeat, Lance lifted the rifle and shot without aiming properly, just to break this horrible passivity. That same moment, the black bayard materialized in Zarkon’s hand and the shield opened its wings to cover its owner, deflecting Lance’s shot to the side. With a roar, Allura dashed forward, but Zarkon was faster. With terrifying smoothness, he transformed the bayard into his infamous chainsword and attacked at the same time. Despite having to fight with his weaker hand, he showed no sign of hesitation. The flexible blade grabbed the altean princess by the ankle, lifted her in the air and threw her into the wall.

And yet Allura’s attack brought its fruit – Zarkon broke his stare with the lion, and Shiro managed to regain some control. He steered Black away, but Zarkon didn’t lose time, either. The bayard glowed in his hand and turned into a thin blade, a rapier rather than a sword. Zarkon turned and cut through the foam with one movement. Slav on the orbit gasped: the magical blade didn’t get stuck in the bubbling mass like everything else, it went through like a hot knife through butter. One of Haggar’s arms was now free to move. She stretched out two free fingers. The rest happened seemingly in one instance. Haggar raised her hand, quintessence already concentrated around her palm like a purple cloud and sent a purple lightning into Zarkon’s head, pressing her fingers to his temple through the hole in the half-broken helmet. The lion, who has just gained momentum and started opening his wings for a new jump, shivered from head to paw and froze again. This time, Shiro stood no chance against the quintessence-doped Zarkon. Black lion spit its pilot out and fell down onto the deck of the cruiser, landing like a bomb, throwing all remaining paladins aside. Without looking, Zarkon cut through the foam several times and separated foam-trapped Haggar with a piece of floor from the ship, still not breaking his stare at the lion. He picked Haggar up, foam immediately stuck to his armour, and made a slow, insecure step forward. His right leg didn’t support him enough and he sank back on the floor. Immediately, as if called, the lion went back alive. It stood back up on its paws and dropped his head near Zarkon, opening his mouth in an inviting gesture. The galran emperor pushed himself up and managed to walk the last remaining inches, where the lion picked him up and closed his mouth, swallowing its former paladin.

The lion raised its head and roared, spreading its wings. Shiro, who now regained his consciousness, switched his jetpack to maximum capacity and soared forward, but it was too late. The lion pushed himself off the deck and into the space. The tips of its metallic feathers started glowing, he spread his wings completely apart, preparing to slide through the astral plane.

“Get him!” someone yelled into the communication channel, the voice distorted with rage to the extent of being utterly unrecognizable.

The lion stretched itself, but at the same second when he was about to perform the jump, a red lightning jumped from the castle. The Red Lion overcame the distance and closed its mouth on the base of Black’s right wing at the moment when the outline of the beast started fading. But the jump could not be stopped anymore, so both lions disappeared from shocked paladins' vision.

“Allura, do you copy? Shiro?” Coran called.  
“I am fine,” Shiro finally answered. “I will get the others. Please try to establish the connection with the Red Lion, find out where Zarkon took him. We need to act fast.”

Several doboshes passed until Shiro and the rest of the team got on board. Unconscious Lotor hung from Hunk's shoulder like a rug, and Pidge whined quietly in Shiro's hands, pressing her palms to her broken bleeding nose. Allura limped to her usual place near the holoscreen.

"Coran, did you find anything?" Shiro asked, his face sad, tired and guilty.

"Not much," the older altean answered, turning away. "While Lance was knocked out, Keith connected with the Red Lion and led it to intercept Zarkon, that's all we know. I have no connection to him anymore."

This is your fault for letting your anger take the better of you: this sentiment hung in the air, almost palpable.

"Hey guys, the lions are connected to each other," Hunk said, also looking guilty, but with hope in his voice. "I'll go to Yellow and try to from there."

Shiro just nodded, his head hung low. He dragged Pidge into the healing pod, then tended to Lotor. The prince was still unconscious, and the force of Zarkon's blow left him few chances to recover soon. Shiro closed the prince in the healing pod and sighed: the whole team expected treason from the half-galra, but the failure came from the one who was supposed to be their leader...

"Hey guys, I think I have the visuals," Hunk's voice tore him out of his sad thoughts.  
"Transmit it on the main holoscreen!" Shiro exclaimed, starting off to the main cockpit.

Somewhere in an unknown sector of the galaxy, the battle between two lions was raging, and Keith was losing. In horror, the remaining paladins watched the Black lion attacking. Zarkon used the lion’s mouth blade to severe Red’s tail, so that now the faster lion could only attack from its mouth.

Both huge creatures clashed against each other, terrible claws on their hind legs scratching each other’s bellies. Black had the advantage of size and more massive armour, but Zarkon was obviously not entirely connected to the lion, so Black moved erratically, as if being unsure what to do. But even so, Red stood no chance against the head of Voltron. Zarkon pushed Red aside, made a backside roll and shot both from the lion’s mouth and its tail. Red was thrown back like a pebble, wiggling helplessly, turned on it’s back and then Zarkon finished his job without mercy: he gained speed and plunged the lion’s claws deep into Red’s unprotected stomach. All lions uttered a groan of pain and grief for their comrade. Red writhed again and froze.

“Keith! Keith, are you alive?” Allura cried helplessly, but no answer came. The video stopped, too, and screens went dark as the castle lost connection to the lion.

“What do we do now?” Hunk asked over the communicator.

“We retrieve the lions,” Shiro answered firmly. “Hunk, can you locate Red? Zarkon will never leave another lion alone, so we will find both of them at the same location. ”

"I can, but it would be much faster if Pidge was around..." the engineer said uncertainly.

In the cockpit of the black lion, Zarkon turned the pilot’s chair backwards to face Haggar, who was still lying on the floor, covered in the foam. He scratched and sliced the sticky mass off her with his left hand, moving the bayard clumsily like a potato peeler. His breath became ragged and his movements were now slow, as if lethargic. Bubbles dissolved at the contact with the magical blade, and slowly, the outlines of Haggar’s body became visible. When she had enough freedom of movement, she nodded him to give her space and simply slid out of her outer robes, stepping outside of the foam clot almost unsoiled, apart from some foam on her wrists. She kicked the messy heap into the corner and in her turn started to help Zarkon. Without asking, she undid the locks on his useless helmet and pulled it off him, then she undid and took off heavy metal plates covering Zarkon's shoulders and breast. When she started undoing the metallic collar, he made a movement to stop her. It was a small, weak one, but she paused nevertheless.

"Without quintessence to fuel it, it is useless anyways," Haggar said, removing also the remainders of the broken quintessence vial.

She inspected the places where the tubes from the vials entered Zarkon's body and exhaled with relief.

"The entry points are not damaged, Sire," she said. "When we are at the main base, I will simply reattach a new vial to it, you won't need a surgery."

Zarkon moved his right arm, flexed his fingers into a fist, then released them again. Without the weight of his armour, his arm moved, but it seemed limp and weak, and he couldn't tense his fingers enough to make a proper fist.

"You need more quintessence injections, of course, Lord," Haggar said, turning away. She sat down into the second pilot chair; Zarkon turned his chair towards the controls once again.

“Guys, guys!” Hunk exclaimed suddenly. “Red is shut down, but we still have the visuals form the Black Lion!”

“How?” Allura exclaimed.

“After Pidge bonded with her lion on Olkari, she told me that she realized how important connectivity and information transfer rate is. So we installed extra connection hubs in lions and in the castle. They work without touching the lion’s consciousness, and I hope they will still work now that Zarkon has taken over the paladin’s seat. The only problem is that our cameras in the lions move together with the flow of quintessence, it's like their blood or something. The camera does not have to be in the cockpit right now, it can be anywhere.”

“Then connect us! Let us at least try it out!" Shiro exclaimed impatiently.

Hunk went silent for a while, then the paladins heard his voice again.

“It works! I can see both what Black sees and the cockpit, and Zarkon is oblivious to my presence!”

“Can you share the visuals with us?” Coran asked, turning the holoprojection on.

“I think I can,” Hunk answered, and the screen went alive again.


	2. Chapter 2

The fight was over. The black lion held the lifeless body of its brother in its claws while flying somewhere. One of its wings was still standing askew, terrible scratches covered its casing. Inside the cockpit, Zarkon’s face was very close to the camera. The paladins could see his wrinkled skin, and the bags under his eyes. He slid his finger over the controls, then closed his eyes, connecting with the lion mentally.

“My right wing is broken,” he said gloomily to Haggar. “We can't phase through astral plane, and the closest empire base is ten vargas flight from here at maximum speed. At maximum speed that I can’t make, since I have to carry the weight of the other beast, and most systems malfunction to one extent or another. The wretched red paladin fought too well.”

“Then we wait ten vargas, my Lord,” Haggar answered calmly. "Can you connect to the imperial transmission frequencies?"

Something noticeably changed between them now that they perceived themselves in private. Some tension was gone, some decorum abandoned. Haggar was now holding her head up, instead of hiding her face behind her hood, as she did before. When Zarkon was freeing her from the foam, he cut off the ends of her hair, so now it looked like she has been at the hands of a crazy hairdresser, one strand hanging longer than the other. With the outer cloak gone, her dress now revealed her scarred forearms and wrinkled neck, but she didn't seem to care. Zarkon tipped something in clumsily with his left hand, but the lion didn't react. 

"The communication unit is broken down, too. It will take movements for the beast to regenerate."

"In several vargas, we will reach the nearest outpost and you will be able to command your armies personally, Sire. Voltron can not be formed without two of its parts, and other enemies are not more than bugs in comparison to your might."

"I wouldn't be so sure..." Zarkon murmured under his breath, closed his burning eyes. "I need to connect deeper with the beast."

Haggar grew silent. She wrapped the dress closer around herself, as if cold, leaned her head against the wall and closed her eyes, too. For a while, none of them uttered a sound.

"Shiro, did you hear that? We still have a chance! The lion doesn't want Zarkon!" Lance exclaimed enthusiastically, but the one he was addressing just shook his head.

"The lion shut me out completely, and I don't feel its mental presence anymore."

"There is no time to wallow in self-pity," Allura said heavily. "Hunk, please try to find out where they are. In the meantime, we will keep watching the transmission. Maybe they will spit something important out."

 

Zarkon slammed his fist on the armrest if his chair and uttered a roar. Haggar jumped, opening her eyes, and immediately searched Zarkon with her gaze.

"What is wrong, Sire? Are we being attacked?"

"I can't connect with the beast, something is stopping me!"

Haggar visibly relaxed after hearing that no immediate danger was present.

"Is it the other paladin?" She asked cautiously.

"No, I don't feel his presence. It is as if the beast himself resists me..."

Haggar was watching the back of Zarkon's chair very attentively.

"But I had an impression that you connected with the beast perfectly on the base, didn't you, Sire? Did something happen since then?"

"I didn't connect with it, Haggar," Zarkon said gloomily. "I forced myself into its mind. It only worked for a very short period of time, now I am starting to feel the kickback..."

"You separated your beast from its kidnappers," Haggar said reassuringly. "That is all that matters. You will have all the time in the universe to reconnect with it properly when we arrive to the main base."

"Until I establish proper connection with it, there will always be threat that the other paladin returns. The beast did protect him in the astral plane, after all."

Haggar and Zarkon went silent again.

 

On the castle ship, Shiro went over to the pods only to find out that Pidge's was already feeling much better, even though her nose still resembled an eggplant, but that Lotor was still unconscious.

"Let me out," the girl demanded. "I want to help!"

If the situation wasn't so dire, Shiro would have never let her put such pressure on herself, but now he just opened the door and watched the girl disappear towards the hangar with lions. Shiro returned back to the bridge. By the time he was gone, the camera slid up, but it was still showing the cockpit of the Black Lion.

 

"Lord, maybe this pause is for the best. There is information I need to tell you..."

Haggar stopped, visibly insecure. Zarkon turned his head slightly in her direction.

"What is it?" he asked. Haggar hesitated, she inhaled, but said nothing, and she intertwined her fingers and pressed the tips together so much that her nails discoloured slightly. Zarkon started turning towards her, and she finally dared to spit it out.

"Sire, you altean wife Honerva isn't dead. I am Honerva."

There was a long silence in the lion, and even the paladins held their breaths. Zarkon was looking somewhere past Haggar's shoulder.

"I figured," he said finally, turning back towards the controls of the lion. "How did you find out?"

Haggar looked up, her face pale with rage.

"You knew?" she snarled. "You knew and you never told me?"

Zarkon sighed, a movement hardly visible.

"I didn't know, I suspected. You are an altean, this one is for sure, despite your skin colour. There were no records of alteans other than my wife in my closest surroundings. Why would a stranger lie with me in the morgue? Moreover, you are no stranger, this was always clear..."

"Why did you never tell me that?" Haggar demanded. "I spent eons, trying to figure out what I was doing before the our death on Daibazaal!"

"I had no proof." The part of Zarkon's face that was still visible, twitched. "You seemed content with the situation the way it was. What if I was mistaken? What if I was right, but you weren't interested anymore? Who knows how you would have taken this suggestion... I risked offending you."

Haggar closed her eyes, saying nothing. Zarkon bent towards the controls, now his face not visible anymore.

"How did you find out?" He repeated his question more persistently.

"I saw it in your memories," Haggar exhaled after a pause. "In my attempts to wake you up from your coma, I accidentally tapped into the wrong part of your conscience."

Zarkon jerked his head up.  
"I don't have such memories," he countered."This is nonsense."

"You do, " Haggar answered, her voice sad. " You just can not access them for some reason. I saw what I used to be in your mind before I remembered myself. I think the memories are still present, but separated from your conciousness by a barrier of some sort."

Zarkon turned the chair swiftly back towards Haggar and leaned forward.

"Then remove the barrier! Do it right now!"

Haggar frowned.

"I won't meddle with your mind now, under stress and without proper equipment! This will have to wait until better circumstances!"

"This can not wait! It is imperative that I have all the memories!"

"I will not put your sanity under risk for your impatience!" Haggar snapped.

"My sanity? What sanity are you talking about, if I find out that there are vast areas of my life that I have no idea about?"

They stared at each other angrily for some time.

"Sire, we will have to wait until better circumstances to access your memories."

Haggar's voice was firm, and, to paladins' surprise, Zarkon averted his eyes, surrendering. He leaned back, and Haggar wrapped her dress around herself once more, as if she suddenly got colder. Zarkon didn't turn his chair away anymore though, and they kept looking at each other

"At least tell me what you saw," Zarkon said after a pause, demand gone from his voice; now he sounded almost pleading.

Haggar smiled sadly.

"What do you want to know, Sire? I saw our time together, from when we first met to the day when you sent Voltron into the rift in an attempt to save me."

"So that's why we did it..." Zarkon murmured. "It always seemed like a weird decision..."

"You always were there to help me, my Lord."

"How could we be married," Zarkon interrupted her, his voice grew louder and tenser. "I mean... physiologically... we couldn't have."

"We were never properly intimate. Lotor is a product of genetic engineering."

Zarkon didn't answer anything for a while, and Haggar also remained silent, but she didn't take her eyes off his face.

"Hunk, Pidge, what is your status?" Allura asked.  
"We are working on it," Pidge answered. "It isn't that easy, tricking the consciousness of the lion!"

 

"What did I... how..." Zarkon on screen asked, and Shiro noticed in amazement that the emperor of the known universe was obviously embarrassed and confused.

Haggar stretched her arm to take Zarkon's hand; her small palm sank in his huge one. He tried to close his weak fingers around hers, but was unable to do it properly. Haggar smiled and slid the tips of her fingers under the metal wristband of Zarkon's armour, making him gasp quietly. The emperor bent forward brokenly, like a mechanical doll whose controls don't function properly. He slid his hand around Haggar's waist to hug her, but stopped in the middle.

"You don't have to do it. If you decline, your position in the empire will not change."

Haggar cupped his cheek with her other hand.

"Decline being with you? Never! You were always here for me, my love," she whispered. A smile lit her face up so much that she seemed almost young. "I always knew I could rely on you with anything, you made me happy like no one ever could. Why would I decline now?"

Zarkon exhaled and pulled her closer in, leaning towards her. Haggar crawled into his lap, and wrapped her arms around his neck. Zarkon hugged her with his good arm and pressed their forehead together.

"I mistreated you for millennia," he exhaled. "You should have been at my side as equal, not as a servant. I am sorry..."

"We didn't know," Haggar murmured, caressing his face. "It doesn't matter."

Zarkon kissed the corner of her lips lightly once and twice, as if not daring to kiss her properly.

"I love you," Zarkon blurted out. "I don't remember what we were before we died, but what you are now is beyond amazing."

"I love you too, my Lord." Haggar whispered affectionately.

Zarkon winced.

"Did you call me that back then?"

"Only as a joke," Haggar answered, letting him bury his face in her shoulder. They froze like that, wrapped around each other, when Shiro finally could take his eyes off the screen. The black paladin felt uneasy, embarrassed for having witnessed something that private. The way cruel witch who tortured him for months was now clinging on Zarkon like a teenage girl with her first crush. He looked at Allura: the princess was staring at the side monitors very attentively, her face pale with rage.

"We should switch the connection off," she said in a strange voice. "This bring us nothing."

"Yes," Shiro nodded, feeling his face burn. Never ever would he watch something like that again on his free will. "I'll go see how Lotor is doing. You also need to pay attention to your leg, if you want to be able to fight soon."

"Yes, princess, let me take you to the medical quarters," Coran said.

They both left, and after Shiro returned from Lotor's medical pod, he remained alone with the huge holoscreen. The camera was now carried down on the other side of the Black Lion's cockpit and all he could see was Zarkon's feet and the edge of Haggar's dress hanging down, but he knew exactly what was happening there. Nausea rose up his throat. Not only did they steal the lion, they also dared to defile it with their disgusting lust! Shiro pressed his prosthetic hand to a fist. How gladly would he slam this fist into Zarkon's face! He exhaled, trying to calm himself: rage did enough wrong today already, now is time for measured actions.

“I don’t have blue skin, by the way. It is brown. I can change...”

Shiro heard Zarkon gasp.

“Incredible. Why did you never tell me you could do it?”

“I couldn’t. I forgot how to do it, together with the rest of my life. It came back together with the memories.”

“Stay this way,” Zarkon murmured. “At least for now, when no one can see you. Are you brown everywhere?”

Shiro heard clothes rustling and Haggar giggling. It was too much even to listen, so he switched the connection out completely. Disgusting. Even the very thought of these two being together made him feel dirty.

"Listen up!" he exclaimed when the Pidge reported having found the coordinates and everyone gathered back on the bridge. "We have to save Keith and retrieve both Lions no matter what! Sure, we don't have Voltron now, but we still have three of the lions, the power of the castle and the Sincline ship. We need to act immediately and intercept them before they get to the nearest galra base. This time, we end it, once and for all!"

He looked around at the faces of his friends, smiling, eager to fight for what they held dear and right. We are better than them, he thought. We will end them for the good of the whole universe. If only the image of Zarkon's fingers, wrapping Haggar's tiny hand, didn't haunt him...


End file.
